Essays

They say the brother died and the sister plucked out his eyes and flung them high, sun and moon. She pushed his heavy breast until it arched, became the heavy sky. They say the brother’s heart drummed and they say the drumming is time.

'Three Myths from the Northern Mariana Islands' published in StoryQuarterly 50. Order your copy here!

Some people in this world live so many lives end to end. He's one of them. Maybe I am, too. In the end, I hold on to this: we can be lost forsaken, and we can find ourselves homeless on an empty beach with nowhere to go, and still it is not over. The world can be reclaimed, the sweetness returned. Another life is possible -- it's just around the corner.

The dress was white with big red blooms all over it. 'A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future,' I said to the girl in the mirror, and waved goodbye. I floated to Van's house, actually floated. When I tied my hair up in front of him, he said, 'Beautiful armpits, Hannah,' and I winked recklessly. Just then, Helms appeared at the door, a bottle of wine under each arm. The boys played some songs, and I poured, and I tapped my feet. We lit a joint and the plumes coiled up blue in the lamplight. Helms scratched the strings and his beard at the same time until his beard sounded metal, and we told him very seriously that he was a genius. Van rubbed some lemon verbena on my wrist--he was always up to these things--and I repeated the Chanel line, which really, if I'm honest, I'd socked away just for him.

'If We Were Really There' published in Tethered by Letters, Issue 9. 2014.

The two inside climb the curving staircase, which will in my mother’s memory build until it winds up at least three levels and in some of her memories even further, in some the staircase keeps going and has no top.

'Glass House: The First Moment of Her Leaving' published in Waccamaw, No. 12. 2014.

The unleashed sail like torn paper. Nesting wasps tumble down in black bundles, loosening. The wind, salt-heavy, deposits gray scales on the skin. Today, I’ll fish a blue Linckia starfish from the fire coral, keep it in a yellow bucket.